The present invention relates to engineering of data communication in particular for sensors in an industrial automation environment.
The following discussion of related art is provided to assist the reader in understanding the advantages of the invention, and is not to be construed as an admission that this related art is prior art to this invention.
In industrial automation technology various methods for data communication are known. These relate to, for example, communication bus systems (e.g. Profibus, Ethernet, CAN bus, etc.) as well as sensor interfaces, I/O interfaces and the like. An engineering system can be used for planning such a data communication. For example, logical addresses are allocated in the configuration of data communication. The engineering system can also be designed in such a way that a planner stipulates addresses and/or protocol usage for a bus system. As a rule, this takes place by using alphanumeric characters in an engineering system or in an automation runtime system. Automation concerns, for example, the automation of a machine tool, a press, a printing machine, a packing machine, a hoist, a robot, etc.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to obviate prior art shortcomings and to provide an improved approach for engineering data communications.